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Thursday, 22 September 2016

David Miliband (the New Labour stalwart who ran away from British politics when his brother beat him to the Labour Party leadership in 2010) is the latest New Labour figure to throw the "unelectable" trope at Jeremy Corbyn.

The first suspicion is that it is just petulant foot-stamping. They right-wing of the party didn't get their own way, so now they've venting their toddler-like fury without even thinking about the consequences of what they're saying.

By continuing to repeatedly badmouth Jeremy Corbyn they're making it seem that they're unaware of the concept of a "self-fulfilling prophecy".

The problem with the strategy of trying to deliberately create the self-fulfilling prophecy that Jeremy Corbyn is "unelectable" is that if the prophecy comes true, there are an awful lot of people in the Labour Party who will blame the saboteurs, not the leadership.

Do the Labour Party saboteurs really think that the party membership are going to blame the guy who tried to do his best despite the challenging circumstances, or the New Labour clique who have been seen to do everything in their power to undermine the Labour Party and its democratically elected leader from day one?

Instead the New Labour lot have just lost the ideological war for the future of the Labour Party for a second time. Their choice now is simple. Unite behind the leader and actually try to win, or carry on trying to undermine the party and put themselves up as the people to blame when their self-fulfilling prophecies come true.

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Tuesday, 20 September 2016

The Guardian journalist Roy Greenslade has written an article entitled "Why Facebook is public enemy number one for newspapers, and journalism". It's a load of sanctimonious, hypocritical and self-pitying rubbish that casts mainstream media journalists (like Roy and his mates at the Guardian) as heroic scrutineers of the establishment, and Facebook as an evil empire that is obstructing and repressing these noble freedom fighters from doing their job of holding the powerful to account.

I don't actually mind Roy Greenslade as a journalist, he's admirably productive and I don't remember ever feeling such visceral revulsion at one of his articles before, but this particular one is appalling one-sided hogwash.

In this article Greenslade scrapes together a bunch of barely related criticisms of Facebook in order to paint himself and his kind as heroes and Facebook as the sinister threat to democratic accountability.In isolation each of the criticisms of Facebook has some merit.

Facebook's tax-dodging activities are well documented. But it takes a good measure of hypocrisy for a Guardian journalist to complain about it given the less than saintly tax affairs of his own stable. Using tax-dodging as a criticism when his own employer is less than squeaky clean really does hammer a great big hole in his over-simplistic "saints and sinners" narrative.

The main problem with Greenslade's "goodies and baddies" story isn't that Facebook is so good (it clearly isn't) it's that the majority of mainstream journalists are not the valiant scrutineers Greenslade paints them as. They're more often than not the repressive cognitive gatekeepers who use trivia, distractions, deliberate propaganda and displays of synthetic outrage in order to keep the "lower orders" well away from the ideological castles of the rich and powerful.The Brexit vote has created a lot of uncertainty (because there was never any actual plan for what it was meant to mean), but one thing about it is absolutely certain: The public are deeply dissatisfied with the status quo. The public are crying out for a change; a shake-up; something radical and different and new.

Whether you like him or not (apparently many people don't) Jeremy Corbyn stands for something new. The most essential change Corbyn is offering is that he wants to prise open the gates of power and allow ordinary people much more access to and influence over the political system and more say in the direction of the economy.

The mainstream media hate Corbyn for this as much as the Westminster establishment club.

The Guardian is supposedly the mainstream media bastion of the progressive liberal-left, but it's savagely biased coverage of the huge democratic socialist movement that has risen up in support of Jeremy Corbyn is abominable. How many times have they tried to portray the hundreds of thousands of people who have united behind Corbyn to demand a better, fairer system as a bunch of vile, brick-lobbing bullies and thugs? Long after the tale about the notorious brick through Angela Eagle's window was discredited as a fabrication, the Guardian carried on weaving it into their anti-Corbyn narratives. When the truth becomes irrelevant because it conflicts with the ideological agenda, then what is being presented is no longer news, it's simply propaganda.

Before social media such propaganda narratives were easy to disseminate because there was no forum for the counter argument to take place, but now these narratives can be shredded on social media within hours. Every time the mainstream press attempt to disguise inaccurate propaganda as news, the more they discredit themselves and the more demand they create for alternative news sources to expose the dishonest agendas they're pushing.In light of all of this, a simplistic "goodies and baddies" story that casts mainstream journalists as the valiant heroes and Facebook as the sinister threat to society simply isn't good enough. The mainstream press aren't essentially good, just as Facebook isn't essentially bad.

For all of it's faults and imperfections Facebook has allowed a guy like me to reach an audience of millions without ever having appeared on the TV or even in my local newspaper. Facebook has given a public voice to the previously voiceless and it's helped the development of a vibrant alternative media that is unafraid to speak outside of the narrow mainstream spectrum of debate.

I have a feeling that this empowerment of non-conformist alternatives to the once closed shop of mainstream journalism is the underhand and unspoken objection that Greenslade and other members of the press pack have to Facebook.

In his article Greenslade even has the gall to accuse Facebook of "narrowing the news agenda" when he knows perfectly well that it's played a fundamental role in widening it and chipping away at the powerful monopolies the mainstream press barons have been allowed to build up for themselves over the decades.

Facebook is allowing ever greater numbers of people to bypass the mainstream media cognitive gatekeepers and search out independent journalists who don't have to toe the editorial line that is dictated to them by the billionaire press barons or opaque corporate owners. Perhaps that's the real unspoken reason that professional hacks like Greenslade feel so threatened by it?

The more the mainstream press continues to present dishonest propaganda as news, the greater the thirst for alternative news sources will become. Blaming Facebook for this is laughable. Facebook is simply the vector by which the alternatives are presented, the real demand for alternatives is created by the dishonesty and cravenness of mainstream journalists themselves. Facebook isn't their enemy number one, they are their own worst enemies and they don't even appear to know it.

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Where are the shrieking headlines about the Tories surrendering to the Argies? Where are the bile dripping editorials? Why isn't Michael Fallon attacking his Tory colleague as "a bigger threat to the Falklands than Argentina" for doing exactly what Jeremy Corbyn suggested just eight months previously?The Falkland Islanders are apparently delighted that the Tories have pinched Jeremy Corbyn's idea, and are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of an end to the decades of crippling trade sanctions on hydrocarbons, fishing, shipping and tourism.
Not only did the Tories (and their attack-dogs in the mainstream press) savage Jeremy Corbyn for suggesting an entirely sensible policy of economic co-operation between the UK and Argentina rather than militaristic antagonism, the Tories have actually gone and nicked it off him within the space of a year!The lack of bile-dripping articles in the mainstream press about how Theresa May is "a bigger threat to the Falklands than the Argentinians" for doing precisely what Jeremy Corbyn was slaughtered for proposing just eight months ago is indicative of the extraordinary levels of pro-Tory bias of the UK mainstream press.

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As one of the most inept Prime Ministers in living memory David Cameron has left an awful lot of toxic legacies behind for his successors to deal with (rising inequality, six years of economically ruinous austerity, re-inflation of the household debt bubble, savage local government cuts, his failed Brexit gamble ...)

The rip-off deal is so bad that George Osborne's own father-in-law David Howell described it as "one of the worst deals ever" for British energy consumers and businesses.

The hopeless chancers Cameron and Osborne left Theresa May in an impossible lose-lose situation.

She either had to enrage the Chinese by backing out of the deal (a risky move when the Brexit vote has put the UK in such a weak position on the geopolitical stage) or she had to completely shaft the British public by continuing with this appalling rip-off deal.

On September 15th 2016 Theresa May announced the inevitable: She's choosing to shaft the British public rather than stand up to the Chinese.

By deciding to continue with a deal to work with a company that stands charged with stealing US nuclear secrets, May is clearly spitting in the eyes of the Americans. The nuclear espionage charges could have been an ideal opportunity to try to renegotiate the deal with less loss of face, but Theresa May spurned it.

The idea of a British Prime Minister spitting in the face of the Americans in order to suck up to the communist Chinese government would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago, but somehow the Tories are being allowed to completely get away with it by the mainstream media.

Just imagine the howls of outrage in the mainstream press if Jeremy Corbyn had even dared propose a policy of gravely insulting the Americans in order to suck up to communist China (obviously he wouldn't, he'd say that Britain should build its own energy infrastructure), yet the Tories aren't just proposing such an absurd policy, it's what they're actually doing ... and there's barely a whisper of dissent about it in the mainstream press.

Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

Wednesday, 14 September 2016

The Tory Party are planning to rig the Westminster electoral system in an attempt to lock themselves into power forever. There's no other way of putting it. All of the commonly attempted Tory justifications for the boundary changes are woeful at best. In this article I'm going to detail just a few of the main objections.The House of Lords

During his six years in power David Cameron stuffed an additional 213 unelected peers into the House of Lords, many of them major Tory party donors and his own personal cronies (his hairdresser, Samantha Cameron's stylist ...). In fact he stuffed unelected peers into the House of Lords at a faster rate than any Prime Minister in history.

The idea that it's necessary to cut the number of elected MPs by 50 in order to "reduce the cost of politics" is an extraordinary attempted justification when the Tories have just added over 200 politicians to the unelected £300 per day for life club. As aresult of all of this crony-stuffing the House of Lords is now the second biggest legislative chamber in the entire world (second only to China) and by far the biggest unelected legislative body on the planet!

What contempt the Tories must have for the electorate to claim that their boundary changes are motivated by a desire to reduce the cost of doing politics when they've spent the last six years stuffing the unelected and already hopelessly bloated House of Lords full of their cronies.

One of the first priorities for any party that is genuinely serious about reducing the cost of politics would be the democratisation of the House of Lords and its reduction in size to a much more manageable level.

The (elected) upper chambers in other large developed nations have far fewer members.

It's absolutely clear from these figures that the unelected House of Lords is massively bloated in comparison to other developed nations. If it was democratised and the number of members halved, it would still be significantly bigger than any comparable upper chamber in the developed world.

The English democratic deficit

Devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has led to an appalling constitutional mess where residents of these nations have proportionally elected parliaments, while all of the English regions outside of London (which has its own proportionally elected assembly) have none.

The English regions should be given a referendum on whether they want regional autonomy and their own parliament (like London) or whether they want to be part of a wider English parliament. Regional autonomy could work well for big regions like Yorkshire (which has a similar size population and economy to Scotland) and also for smaller regions like Cornwall (which has its own unique cultural identity and language). Other areas might prefer to be part of a wider parliament of the English regions.

It's completely unacceptable that residents of the English regions continue to be treated as second class citizens of the UK with no proportionally elected parliament like residents of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London.

Any attempt to define the Tory electoral boundary changes in terms of "fairness" is absolutely absurd when no effort is being made to address the English democratic deficit.

The incomplete voting register

Another factor that makes the proposed Tory boundary changes incredibly unfair is the way they have decided to use an incomplete voting register to base the new constituency sizes on.

It's bad enough redrawing constituencies in line with the number of registered voters instead of the actual population of the areas, but using an out-of-date register to make the calculations with is utterly ridiculous.

The Tory decision to base the rejigged boundaries on the electoral register in December 2015 (just after they threw millions of people off it by introducing individual registration) is transparently unfair when it's now clear that two million people have joined the electoral register since (presumably to vote in the EU referendum).

It's literally impossible for Tories to argue that these boundary changes are being done to "more fairly represent the size of the electorate" unless they cynically ignore the fact that the size and distribution of the registered electorate has changed dramatically since the figures they're basing their changes upon, meaning that they're already terribly outdated.The power imbalance

Reducing the number of MPs while keeping the number of government ministers the same will obviously reduce the ability of parliament to hold the government to account, because there will be fewer non-ministers to scrutinise all of the legislation.

This problem of reduced accountability will be exacerbated by the fact that each MP will experience an average 8.3% increase in their constituency workload on top of the fact that there will be fewer MPs to hold the government to account.

The UK political system is already terribly over-centralised, with the Prime Minister and their cabinet members operating without proper scrutiny, accountability or censure. A reduction in the number of elected MPs would only make this situation much worse.A growing population and a shrinking parliament?

The number of MPs in Westminster has fluctuated slightly over the years, but the last time the number of MPs went below 615 was the 18th Century. The UK has had well over 600 MPs ever since 1801, with the absolute low point since then coming between 1922 and 1945 when the number was set at 615 (just after independence for the Republic of Ireland).

A comparison between the number of MPs and the population of the United Kingdom reveals that the Tory plan to reduce the number of MPs will leave the UK with by far it's worst level of political representation.

The absurd 5% threshold

Nobody objects to the principle that constituencies should be of more-or-less the same size, but in setting the threshold at just 5% the Tories are ensuring that there will need to be a costly and disruptive set of boundary changes after every election.

If the threshold was set at 5% of the actual population of the areas then changes in population dynamics would necessitate regular boundary changes, but setting it at 5% of the registered electorate makes it even more messy, because (as the situation in Hackney proves) the number of registered voters can fluctuate wildly..

This is yet another example of the Tories "saving money" narrative failing to make sense. If they were really concerned about saving money, they wouldn't have set their arbitrary limit so low and created the need for a costly set of constituency tampering after every single election.Legitimacy

If there is one flaw in the Westminster electoral system it's not that there are "too many MPs" it's that millions of people are locked out of the political system as a result of the archaic and unrepresentative Westminster voting system.

There are so many flaws with the Westminster voting system it's wise to stick to just four of the main ones in order to stop this article from getting over-long.

Safe seats

The current Westminster voting system ensures that there are hundreds of "safe seats" where the incumbent party could put up a severed pig's head with their rosette on it and romp to a landslide victory.

The existence of safe seats means that there are an awful lot of extremely complacent MPs in parliament who think they can get away with pretty much anything, safe in the knowledge that their place in parliament is assured by the tribalistic attitudes of their constituents.

One of the benefits of a multi-member proportional election system is that it could pit members of the same party against one another, meaning only the ones who best serve their electorate would be guaranteed a seat.

Disproportionality

The 2015 General Election was staggeringly disproportional. The two new contenders (UKIP and the Green Party) polled over 5 million votes between them but ended up with just two of the 650 MPs. In return for 16.4% of the vote, these parties ended up with just 0.3% of the MPs!

If you add the Liberal Democrats into the mix, UKIP, the Lib-Dems and the Green Party collected 25.3% of the votes between them and got 10 MPs. Labour got 30.4% of the vote and 232 MPs and the Tories got 36.9% of the vote and 330 of the MPs (more than half of them).

If any party is serious about "fairness" they wouldn't be tinkering with the number of MPs, they'd be ensuring that the smaller parties get a fairer representation of the MPs.

ApathyA system that traps millions of people in "safe seats" and massively discriminates against the smaller parties is one of the fundamental drivers of political apathy. If people thought that their vote actually counted for anything, they'd be far more likely to actually get out and vote.

Non-representationOne of the quirks of the current Westminster voting system is that the vast majority of MPs end up getting elected with less than 50% of the vote, meaning that the vast majority of voters in their constituencies actually voted against them.

The introduction of larger multi-member constituencies would put an end to this farce by ensuring that people have numerous local MPs to turn to. It's funny how Tories always harp on about competition being the driver of efficiency and good performance, but when it comes to competition between local MPs they're suddenly ever so keen to keep hold of their cosy constituency monopolies.

Imagine if you lived in a bigger constituency with six local MPs. Maybe two Tories, two Labour an Lib-Dem and a Green. You could turn to any of them with your issue. Don't you think the rivalry would give the various MPs a very strong incentive to provide the best level of service possible to people like you?ConclusionIf the Tories were honestly committed to providing a more representative political system (rather than a means of rigging the boundaries to lock themselves into power forever), then the first thing on the list would have to be a fair voting system. The Tory rhetoric simply doesn't match their proposals. If they cared about the cost of politics they'd address the bloated unelected House of Lords, not trim down the size of the elected House of Commons. And if they cared about fairness then they'd introduce fair votes and put an end to the English democratic deficit.

The very first lesson that should have been learned in Iraq was that toppling a government (no matter how bad it is) is a terrible idea if there isn't an extremely robust and coherent plan for what comes next. If the plan is inadequate it results in a power vacuum and huge numbers of innocent civilians end up suffering the appalling consequences.

It's absolutely clear from the fact that only fifteen of the UK's 650 MPs voted against David Cameron's gung-ho military action in Libya that the British political establishment completely ignored what should have been the most obvious conclusion from the humanitarian disaster in Iraq.Findings of the Libya report

The Foreign Affairs Committee report is absolutely damning. Here are some of the key findings:

"A policy which had [supposedly] intended to protect civilians drifted towards [the illegal policy of] regime change and was not underpinned by strategy to support and shape post-Gaddafi Libya".

"Decisions were not based on accurate intelligence."

"The UK Government failed to identify that the threat to civilians [from Gadaffi] was overstated."

"The UK Government failed to identify that the rebels included a significant Islamist element."

"The consequences of the military action were political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal welfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL in North Africa."

Libya purchased some £30 billion of weapons and ammunition between 1969 and 2010. After the collapse of the Gaddafi regime, some weapons fell into the hands of the militias. Other Libyan weapons and ammunition were trafficked across North and West Africa and the Middle East.

"The international community’s inability to secure weapons abandoned by the Gaddafi regime fuelled instability in Libya and enabled and increased terrorism across North and West Africa and the Middle East ... It is probable that none of the states that intervened in Libya would have been prepared to commit the necessary military and political resources to secure stocks of weapons and ammunition. That consideration should have informed their calculation to intervene."

"Political instability in Libya has led to a permissive environment for terrorist groups in which to operate, including ISIL affiliated groups."

"ISIL has used its presence in Libya to train terrorists. For example, Sefeddine Rezgui, the gunman who killed Western holidaymakers in Tunisia in June 2015, was trained by ISIL at its base in Sabratha along with the two gunmen who killed 22 tourists at the Bardo museum in Tunis."

"Political engagement might have delivered civilian protection, regime change and reform at a lesser cost to the UK and Libya. The UK would have lost nothing by trying these instead of focusing exclusively on [the illegal concept of] regime change by military means."

"Former Prime Minister David Cameron was ultimately responsible for the failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy."

The UK’s actions in Libya were part of an ill-conceived intervention, the results of which are still playing out today.

Lessons not learned

David Cameron's gung-ho rush into Libya resulted in many of the same disastrous outcomes as Blair's invasion and occupation of Iraq. Political and economic collapse, sectarian warfare, a huge refugee crisis, untold civilian suffering and a continuing legacy of violence and chaos, and the empowerment of ISIL/Daesh.

The factor that makes the intervention in Libya so much worse is not the scale of it, which has never quite reached the utter devastation Blair achieved in Iraq, but the fact that Cameron's gung-ho warmongering in Libya proved beyond doubt that the British political establishment had completely refused to learn the single most important lesson from Iraq: Toppling a government (no matter how harsh it is) tends to make things an awful lot worse if it is done without a robust and coherent plan for what comes next.The 15 MPs who had the sense to vote against Cameron's warmongering

13 MPs and two "tellers" voted against military action in Libya. Here is the full list of the tiny minority of MPs who demonstrated that they had sense enough to learn the most important lesson from the Iraq catastrophe:Graham Allen (Labour)John Baron (Conservative)Ronnie Campbell(Labour)Jeremy Corbyn(Labour)Mark Durkan (SDLP)Barry Gardiner(Labour)Roger Godsiff (Labour)Caroline Lucas (Green)John McDonnell(Labour)Linda Riordan(Labour)Margaret Ritchie (SDLP)Dennis Skinner(Labour)Mike Wood(Labour)Katy Clark(Labour)Yasmin Qureshi(Labour)

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How on earth could the Labour Party purge squad have been concentrating their efforts on a massive social media trawling operation to turf hundreds of people out of the party over completely innocuous social media comments while this incredibly high profile example of abusive behaviour went unpunished for so long?The problem with the NEC using Foster as a token sacrifice to create the impression of balance is that there are plenty of other examples of Labour Party elitists (like Tom Blenkinsop, Ian Austin, and Luke Akehurst) busily slinging and retweeting insults, abuse and utterly divisive comments. If the Foster suspension sets the precedent that calling other Labour members Nazis is unacceptable abuse, then surely it stands to reason that calling other members "Stalinists" or "Trots" constitutes unacceptable abuse too?Another thing that will ensure that the accusations of hypocrisy will not be going away is the continued membership of the major Labour donor David Sainsbury. If voting for the Green Party ages before they even joined Labour has been deemed a purge-worthy offence by the NEC, then making a £2,125,000 donation to the Liberal Democrats whilst a member of the Labour Party has to result in suspension too. As long as they're turfing ordinary members out of the party for utterly trivial stuff, there's absolutely no way that the Labour purge squad can justify continuing to allow the insulting, abusive and utterly divisive behaviour of anti-Corbyn members of the party elite to go unpunished.As long as they're turfing ordinary members out of the party for having supported other parties before they even joined Labour, there's absolutely no way that the Labour purge squad can even try to justify allowing a member of the party elite to actually hand two million quid to a rival political party.One token sacrifice of a Labour Party elitist by the NEC will not make the accusations of elitism, heavy-handedness, double standards and politically motivated bias go away.

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Saturday, 10 September 2016

Doesn't Liam Fox even realise that it's his job to promote British businesses rather than malign them?British businesses are already having a difficult time dealing with the uncertainty over Brexit, and Theresa May's evasive refusals to explain whether the government is going to be seeking to retain access to the European single market or not, now they've got a Tory minister for international trade slagging British business off as "too lazy, and too fat on our successes in previous generations" and complaining that they spend too much time playing golf rather than doing their jobs.

The idea that all British executives are lazy golf-playing wasters is an extraordinarily silly generalisation. We all know that in any country there are some lazy executives like that, some who just do their jobs and maintain a sensible work-life balance, and some who work themselves into an early grave with the stress and long hours. Crass generalisations are no good to anybody, but coming from the guy who's actual job it is to promote British businesses on the international stage, it's not just crass and stupid, it's reckless beyond belief.Members of the CBI must be absolutely fuming that their decision to turn their business lobbying organisation into a blatant propaganda unit for the Tory party has been rewarded with such a massive kick in the teeth from the Tory minister who is supposed to actually be representing their interests on the world stage.Liam Fox has already been disgraced once for giving his special friend Adam Werrity access to classified meetings during his stint as Defence Secretary. He should have been kept well away from responsible positions on the world stage from then on, but for some unknowable reason Theresa May handed him a reprieve and the vital role of looking after Britain's international trade interests during the Brexit negotiations, and within a couple of months he's shot himself in the foot by slagging off British businesses as lazy and uncompetitive.Just imagine the horrified reaction from the mainstream press if it was one of Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet who had insulted British industry like that. "Unpatriotic" they'd wail. "Anti-business", "incompetent", "unfit for government" ....

Theresa May's Downing Street spin doctors have tried making the excuse for Fox that he was "clearly expressing private views" and the mainstream media have taken to uncritically repeating this astonishingly feeble excuse rather than pointing out how woeful it is.Just try to imagine the BBC and the mainstream media uncriticially reporting this "just private views" excuse if it had've been one of Jeremy Corbyn's team describing British business as a load of shit.

Of course they wouldn't have just let this utterly feeble excuse slide, they would have lampooned it for the rubbish that it is, repeatedly demanded that the Labour shadow minister be sacked, and used it as a stick to beat the shadow minister with at every opportunity if Corbyn somehow decided that it would be a good move to keep such an incompetent blabber mouth in his top team.

Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.